Businessman creates home out of a former elementary school

The 2,000-square-foot gym has become the main living area and has been divided into sections. The original gym floor remains, as do the basketball nets. A custom ceiling light fixture in the middle of the room was designed and built by Simpson.

Photograph by: Anita Murray
, The Ottawa Citizen

The curb appeal may be a little unusual, but who else can say they've got a retractable basketball net as part of their living room decor?

Such is the vision of entrepreneur John Simpson, who saw the potential in an abandoned rural school southwest of Brockville and set about converting it into a combined home and business.

The business owner, investor, renovator and former real estate broker is used to taking chances, but even his grown children questioned the move when he bought the five-acre property six years ago, eventually making plans to sell his horse ranch and move into the school.

"They thought the old man had run right off the deep end," he says with a chuckle. Although experienced in construction and home conversions, he had never tackled anything quite like this, he admits.

But he was undeterred. So for the better part of a year, a project that was supposed to take six months saw about one-quarter of the building space, or 3,300 square feet, turned into his home, while the remainder was left as rental office and long-term storage space.

Its charm is in how much of the character of the elementary school remains.

The gym, with its 16-foot ceiling and enormous open space - it's just over 2,000 square feet alone - has become the main living area.

To make it more homey, Simpson painted the cinder block walls in a warm burnt orange, gold and green combination and divided the space into designated areas.

There's a conversation area, for instance, with leather chairs grouped together and ringed in greenery near one of the three patio doors. There are also dining and TV "rooms," a games area and bar.

Simpson has filled the space with pictures, knick-knacks and plants as another way to shrink the room.

And the patio doors, the creation of which involved a laborious effort to cut through the 22-inch thick walls, flood the space with light.

But he's kept the retractable basketball nets; they're left down and now sport ceramic tile on the backboards, making it difficult to shoot hoops these days. And he kept the Italian clay tile gym floor, having it refinished by the son of the man who originally installed it when the school was built in 1965.

The kitchen stretches across what had been the front of the stage, behind which is now the master bedroom, a novel use for a former stage, perhaps.

The birch stage floor has been refinished in the master bedroom, where a long cut-out in the wall above the kitchen cupboards makes up for a lack of windows, allowing for air movement and letting in natural light.

(Simpson once had a former student stop by and recount how he would often hide for hours under the stage waiting for the janitor to leave so he could then play basketball to his heart's content.)

The old school kitchen is now the laundry room, the staff room is a home gym, the Grade 7/8 class has been converted into the garage and, quirkiest of all, the old boys' and girls' bathrooms have been joined to become a lavish master ensuite. At more than 600 square feet on its own, this is yet another area where Simpson kept what he could of the old school.

The original terrazzo floors remain and dark brown tiles mark where the bathroom stalls once were.

The old boys' bathroom now houses a 7.5-by five-foot walk-in glass-block shower, double vanity and custom birch linen closet, while the girls' bathroom offers a stand-alone tub and hot tub and a built-in wine cellar. The wall tile, Simpson admits, is a design he stole from a Tim Hortons bathroom. The whole conversion cost him about $220,000.

In another twist to this unusual home, Simpson has decided it's time to sell. He turns 65 next year and is ready for a life change, looking to buy an island in the nearby Thousand Islands. As fate would have it, the agent he found to help him with his island search just happens to be a former principal of the school.

"When I walked through the door the first time my jaw just dropped. There's a lot of memories here for me," says Glen-nda Olivier, who retired from the school in 2004. "I'm really excited that the school is still being utilized and that it's not just crumbling."

The seven-classroom school taught students from kindergarten to Grade 8, with upwards of 150 pupils during Olivier's tenure. It closed in 2005 due to declining enrolment.

Olivier admits it will take a special kind of buyer for such a unique property, but is confident someone else will see the appeal that Simpson did.

Story Tools

The 2,000-square-foot gym has become the main living area and has been divided into sections. The original gym floor remains, as do the basketball nets. A custom ceiling light fixture in the middle of the room was designed and built by Simpson.

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